On: A Lisp in 99LOC

[eqvinox]

Holy cow this is —structurally, not just expression— some of the worst C code I have ever seen, with the abuse of the 'double' type, 'T' cast that looks like a declaration, endian dependency, and strict aliasing violations galore… does this even work on a modern compiler? o.O

[omoikane → eqvinox]

It does not, because there is a syntax error on line 81 (extra close parenthesis):

https://github.com/Robert-van-Engelen/tinylisp/blob/2d0fb35b...

[Y_Y → omoikane]

Brought to you by this marvellous commit with the message "update",

https://github.com/Robert-van-Engelen/tinylisp/commit/40c6c0...

[f1shy → eqvinox]

Certainly not the worst I have seen, by far; but yes, not pretty. IMHO “Just for making it shorter“. I would very much prefer 200 lines of actually readable nice code.

[sevensor → f1shy]

For reading, I enjoyed fe, which was very clear: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36239175

[f1shy → sevensor]

Yes! Exactly what I meant. 700 lines, but of code that can be understood, and looks clearly as C. Also btw, the general file structure, the documentation, I prefer fe any day of the week. Thanks for pointing that out, I will take a look at it.

[OhMeadhbh → eqvinox]

Yeah. It's munged to fit in 99 lines.

[eqvinox → OhMeadhbh]

That's besides my point, which is why I said "structure, not just expression".

It could've used a struct rather than wedging tags into a double's first byte and still be 99 lines.

[fami-com → eqvinox]

That's a standard technique in interpreters. All non-toy Javascript engines use it, for example.

[Spivak → eqvinox]

If that's the trick you object to then you will be sad to hear that Ruby uses it.

[cardiffspaceman → eqvinox]

Nan-boxing is awesome.

[messe → eqvinox]

Surpringly readable though, despite all that, if you've ever implanted a language in similar constraints.

[messe → messe]

*implemented.

Too late to edit now.